Category: fruit

Back To Fall: Frangipane Tart With Bourbon Brown Sugar Peaches

pastry tart with peaches on a wooden cutting board
Peach and almond delicious.

August might just be the very best month of the summer.

I realize this is a blasphemous statement to place at the very top of September’s post, but bear with me.

There is a tart at the end of all of this.

For the second year in a row, Khristian and I have headed to Canada to spend a few weeks in the lovely province of New Brunswick, camping on a piece of raw land we purchased last year and gazing out at the creeping fog of the Bay of Fundy.

The Bay of Fundy is out there. Somewhere.

While this blog post was initially going to be titled, “How to build a camping platform without murdilating your partner,” I have mellowed somewhat, basted as I have been over the past two weeks in salt air and the chittering of squirrels.

No one was harmed in the making of this deck.

Coming home, and walking to the farmer’s market this morning, I realized that August is the best month of summer.

First, yes, it’s usually hotter than hell, but most people have their summer gear dialed in at this point and are capable of finding water or keeping cool. Many people head to the beach at this time (perfect time to avoid it, IMVHO), or just find some friends and a piece of shade to hang out in.

In short, by August, we are all used to the hellish weather and a little more relaxed about it. Sure, there’s still chatter on the topic but it’s less offended and more accepting, a sort of late summer resignation.

Next, by the time August rolls around, the frenetic new energy of the summer is chilled out. In June and July, everyone tries to do allofthethings, feels, in fact, COMPELLED to do them, but by August, much like that wild patch of overgrown, spindly, weighted down trio of tomato plants on your balcony and the overabundance of zucchini packed in ziploc baggies in your freezer, we have all given up. Sure, we still do someofthethings, but mostly it’s at a more leisurely pace. We are in our groove. Laid back.

It’s like we finally realize how long the days actually are in summer and just stop rushing around.

This more relaxed vibe is what all the commercials are actually talking about in April, looking towards summer. We just don’t get there until August. Add two eclipses and Mercury in retrograde during the entire month of July, and that’s some frantic shit right there. August is one big, fat exhale.

And then as August winds down? SCHOOL SUPPLIES.

Not back-to-school shopping, which sucks at any age, but school supplies. Fresh notebooks; new, full-to-the-brim ink pens; post-its; planners; and, if you’re lucky, a brand-new Trapper Keeper.

In college, the promise and possibility (and unfortunate expense) of new textbooks. I am probably the only person in history who didn’t mind the expense, but then again, I believe you can never spend too much on books.

August is the best. It leads into the productive energy of the fall in preparation for the hibernation of winter. This gentle seasonal slope makes me more motivated and often more creative – I do some of my best work in August and September. It’s like a reset.

I come back to the kitchen more energized, usually, and am baking with a ferocity that usually evaporates in mid-summer’s heat. Right now I am smelling the beginning notes of Frank’s Holy Bundt, unsurprisingly posted first on this blog on September 1st two years ago.

This time of the year the farmer’s markets are overflowing with abundance as well. Everything summer comes to a peak right now, perfect timing for canning, preserving, and otherwise storing away the easy bounty of summer against winter’s leaner feel.

Today I walked through Hampden in the sparkling sunshine, stopped at a neighborhood pear tree to see how things were going, and came away from the market with peaches, green beans, and a zucchini the size of my femur bone (put half in the current Holy Bundt and am freezing the other half for the next one).

The peaches. Man.

Everyone talks about South Carolina or Georgia peaches, but Maryland peaches kick their ass in a peach fistfight. They have more flavor and silkier flesh than their southern cousins, and the farm I bought from today is 30 miles from my back porch.

I ate one on the way home, and saved the others for this, my frangipane tart. Frangipane seems like a really complicated thing, mostly because its correct pronunciation eludes me, but that’s about it. It has a delicate almond flavor but still holds up like a more rustic dessert. The first time I made it with an apple butter caramel swirl on top I couldn’t cram it into my gaping maw fast enough. It wasn’t too sweet and had a tender, light crumb.

This time, some peaches and some bourbon and some lemon and some peach marmalade from Italy brighten the whole thing up.

You could also swap plums for the peaches and switch the bourbon to rum. Or use tart apples tossed in brown sugar, a squeeze of lemon, and some cinnamon. I’d like to try a banoffee version (bananas and toffee caramel), but that might be for the holidays.

Enjoy the last few days of summer.

Frangipane Tart With Bourbon Brown Sugar Peaches

Ingredients

Crust

½ cup whole toasted almonds

1 ¼ cups gluten-free all-purpose flour

¼ cup sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 stick chilled butter, cut into pieces

2 tablespoons ice water

Filling

1 ¼ cup whole almonds

¼  cup brown sugar, packed

6 tablespoons butter, at room temperature OR melted and cooled

1 large egg

1 egg white

1 capful vanilla extract (see Recipe Notes)

1 teaspoon bourbon

2 teaspoons lemon zest

2 big peaches (between a tennis ball and a softball size)

Glaze

¼ cup peach preserves

3 tablespoons bourbon

2 tablespoons brown sugar

½ teaspoon lemon juice

Method

Preheat oven to 375°.

Start with your crust. Pulse almonds in food processor until they are finely chopped. Add flour, sugar, and salt and process until almonds are ground into meal.

Pulse butter in until mixture resembles sand. Mix in enough water to form moist clumps. Once this happens, turn the dough directly into your tart pan and press into shape (see Recipe Notes for what to do if you use regular flour). Use a piece of plastic wrap to keep your hands clean and press dough evenly into the sides and bottom of the tart pan. The goal is an equal thickness all around, about 1/8”.

Cover tart pan and refrigerate at least two hours or overnight.

When you are ready to bake, place tart pan on baking sheet and poke several times with a fork. You can place a piece of parchment on top of the crust and fill the crust with blind baking beads or rice, which will prevent the edges of the tart from shrinking and which I usually forget to do.

Bake crust 10 minutes, popping any additional bubbles that arise with a toothpick if you have not filled your crust with the baking beads or rice. If you are using parchment, remove the parchment after 15 minutes to allow the bottom to cook.  Crust may take up to 20 minutes to become a pale golden color – be patient.

Cool tart while you make the filling.

Blend almonds in food processor until they break into smaller pieces. Add remaining sugar butter, eggs, extracts, bourbon, and lemon zest and continue to pulse until almonds are finely ground and ingredients are well mixed. Spread the filling in your crust.

Wash and slice the peaches into ½” slices (ish. No need to be precious. This is a rustic tart). Place peaches in a spiral pattern (or any pattern, really) into the top of the tart, pressing gently to make sure they stick into the filling. The filling should come up the sides of the peaches a little.

Bake tart on baking sheet until frangipane is puffed and golden, between 30 and 45 minutes.

While the tart bakes, prepare the glaze. Stir brown sugar, bourbon, and lemon juice in a small saucepan over medium heat until mixture just boils and sugar is completely dissolved (this happens quickly). Strain glaze into a bowl.

Transfer the tart to a cooling rack and brush the entire surface with the glaze.

When completely cool, release the tart from the pan and serve to much adoration. A little unsweetened whip cream (or with just a tiny splash of almond extract) is delicious on this. If you’re especially fancy, garnish with chopped fresh lemon balm.

Recipe Notes

  • I used McKenna bourbon in this recipe, a seriously underrated, easy drinking and mixing bourbon. It is young and cheap and thus smooth and sweeter, with notes of caramel and vanilla. It goes well with the flavors of this tart and costs less than $15 a bottle. Go get some.
  • If you use regular flour, do not place the crust directly in the pan; follow the typical crust recipe, which is to bring the dough together by turning it out of the food processor after you incorporate the water and kneading gently before forming it into a ball, wrapping it in plastic and chilling it at least two hours. Then, roll the dough out on a floured surface before placing into your tart pan and baking.
  • Prepare the crust a day ahead, chilling overnight in the ‘fridge and then baking the next day.
  • Tart can sit at room temperature for eight hours before serving, but you should plan to eat it on day one. The crust softens in the ‘fridge overnight, so you don’t get that snap the next day. Still delicious for breakfast.

Baltimore, I Cain’t Quit You: Of Fruit Horses and Strawberry Freezer Jam

Open jar of mixed berry jam on faded wood.
Simple and delicious, every time.

Any time I get to feeling pretty low about Baltimore, like I maybe don’t want to stay here or I need to run away for a long time, something quintessentially Baltimore happens.

Tonight our local arabber* came through with his rhythmic jingle and frisky horse. He has been a fixture this spring, more so than in years past, but I never seem to have cash or need for vegetables or fruit when he hollers his way past my house. Tonight was different – I had both – and so slipped into my Converse, grabbed my dollars, and headed outside.

As I walked up, he was finishing with another customer, who was taking a picture of her young charge as he barely kept it together sitting on top of the horse. Once the kid slid down, he turned to me. I asked the arabber if he had any strawberries. He sighed, reached over the top of his fruit and handed me a pound that looked slightly worse for the wear.

“I just gave her all my berries,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and looking disappointed. “They was getting on. Don’t me wrong – some of them is still good. Go ask her for some. Let’s go ask her. I’ll hold your hand, and we’ll go ask.”

He grabbed my hand and we walked across the street, where the previous customer was already waiting with three more pounds of strawberries in her hands.

“I can’t use ’em all,” she said. “How many you want?”

“Put ’em in pancakes, or something,” the arabber said. “They still good.”

And waving off my offer of money, he simply said, “That’s just what you do for people.”

Baltimore is this scrappy little city that can’t find an honest mayor, likes to keep its races segregated, and has a hard time holding onto police chiefs.

But it’s also a city of 238 neighborhoods, neighborhoods that sometimes come together in ways that expose our shared humanity and the value of simple human kindness and generosity. Maybe I am grasping at straws(berries), but it was a beautiful, unexpected bounty that went beyond a standard bit of commerce.

So I came home with a warm heart and four pounds of strawberries, most of which, if I’m being honest (which I always try to be), were no good. I hulled and cut up the good ones and bundled the rest up for the chickens at The City Ranch (where I volunteer) – they will come running and be thrilled at the turn their morning takes when the strawberries come tumbling down.

The good ones made this small batch, use-it-up refrigerator/freezer jam that would make my Depression-era grandmother proud. Could not be simpler, and it is great for those who don’t want to make massive batches of fresh jam.

Some days, this city is a really great place to be.

Strawberry Freezer Jam

Ingredients

1 pound fresh fruit (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries)

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Method

Clean the fruit. If you are using strawberries, roughly chop them, but otherwise, leave every other kind whole.

Place a small plate in the freezer. This will become clear shortly (or you could read through the whole recipe – always a good idea).

Combine fruit and all other ingredients in a heavy, high-sided saucepan and bring to a rolling boil for 20 minutes. You are looking for the jam to thicken a bit, but it will still be fairly thin while it’s hot.

A test: spoon a small amount of jam on the cold plate and let sit for two minutes. Drag a finger though the jam. If it stays separated, it’s ready. Otherwise, give it another couple minutes and check again.

Once it’s a good thickness, scoop into clean jars (any size, really) and set on the counter to come to room temperature before popping onto the freezer or refrigerator. If you freeze (up to four months), leave plenty of room for expansion. Otherwise, this fresh, delicious jam lasts for up to two weeks in the ‘fridge.

*For more on arabbers, read this excellent longform article on how arabbers are a dying (and crucial) part of city life in Baltimore, and watch this 2004 documentary We Are Arabbers to see them in action.

Neighborhood Slow-Cooked Apple Butter

apples
Ugly apples make the best apple butter. #Trust

Growing up, we had an enchanted orchard on our property.

I grew up on the side of a mountain in western Maryland, about an hour from both Baltimore and DC. Our driveway was an old stagecoach route, and the core of our home – the kitchen, the room above the kitchen (mine, eventually), and the dirt-and-stone basement – was 100 years old when I was little.

My childhood being what it was, I spent a lot of time alone, and some of that outside, wandering around the 11 acres of our (mostly) wooded property with a dog, a lot of ticks, and many copperhead snakes. We had a creek that ran through the property, minor rocky caves, and the above-mentioned orchard.

The orchard wasn’t much to look at. With just two each of neglected apple and pear trees, the harvest was uneven and unpretty. In the way of children, I don’t remember any pruning or care taken for that orchard, and I don’t remember any formal apple picking from that orchard. The apples and pears started out small and gnarly and grew more so as I got older, but if I had to guess at a memory I would say they were probably delicious in the way that only non-hybrid, heirloom, planted 30-years-before dwarf apple and pears can be. I took them for granted, I am sure, but I do remember pies, apple butter, and baked apples – the core hollowed out and stuffed full of nuts, raisins, cinnamon, and brown sugar and baked until the apples softened and combined with the sugar to release a syrupy ambrosia.

I remember dappled light streaming through the overgrown branches, the dampness of moss, and a constant hypervigilant awareness of the possibility of snakes. There was a moss-covered rock I spent time on, dreaming and staring out through the golden green undergrowth into the deepness of the rest of the woods.

Fast forward thirty years to five acres in Marietta in 2010 and a modestly larger group of five apple trees (plus six blueberry bushes and a peach tree that was mostly dead and only ever produced one rock-hard but perfectly delicious peach in our time there). Same unkempt branches. Same unlovely apples, but in abundance this time, weighing the branches so that in the fall I thought perhaps the pruning might take care of itself. These were Macintosh apples, I guessed, and covered with black spots that the interwebs assured me would not hurt me but just weren’t pretty to look at.

The squirrels sure loved the apples. They would sit high in the tree and take one bite, hurling them to the ground, often just as we walked by. If they had better aim things might be different, but as it stood then our orchard was littered through the late summer and early fall with half-eaten and partially rotted apples, bees, and the sickly sweet smell of decay.

Even with the squirrels doing their wasteful best, the apples the first year we moved to that house were abundant. I sent my horse’s hoof trimmer home with bags, and anyone else who wanted some, from the neighbor to the mailman to the UPS driver. And still there were too many.

In our urban environment now, there is no easy abundance of fruit – unless you look for it. Just one alley over there is a peach tree loaded with small, hard, but soon-to-be-delicious peaches. Two blocks away is an apple tree, pruned back hard last fall in anticipation of a house sale but coming back gangbusters with big apples. A sad little peach tree shares that yard as well, and an overloaded crabapple tree is just down the block in a pocket park off an alley.

Last week I nearly missed the apple tree down the block. I meant to go on Sunday morning but couldn’t quite drag myself out of bed, and when I passed it walking home from teaching yoga on Wednesday, nearly all the apples within sidewalk reach were gone. I don’t know what kind of apples these are – their texture is spongy and the flavor is tart apple essence rather than a big, bounding punch in the taste buds. But they might as well be my favorite kind – they have the terroir of Hampden, Baltimore. This could be a positive or negative, depending on your perspective, but for me, in many ways this tree brings me back to that enchanted orchard and makes me feel more connected to this city that I am still trying to love in spite of its trash and corruption and inequality. I can come to this tree in all of its stages – barren limbs, shy little buds, bursting flower, heavy with apples, gently drooping with the coming cold – and it brings me a similar peace that I felt in the glade on the side of the mountain in western Maryland.

This recipe is an easy solution to a beautiful abundance of fruit – apples, peaches, or pears. It couldn’t be easier, and you don’t need a stupid Instant Pot to do it. Allowing it to slow-cook overnight (or during the day while you’re at work) deepens the flavors, caramelizes the sugar, and produces a nuanced fruit butter unlike anything I have ever tasted.

Share it with your neighbors.

Neighborhood Slow-Cooked Apple Butter

(makes about four pints)

Ingredients

A dozen or so apples, about six pounds, peeled, cored, and chopped  (see Recipe Notes)

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (freshly ground if you can)

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

hearty pinch of salt

Method

Place all ingredients in your slow cooker and stir to combine.

Let it cook on low for eight hours, or high for four to six. You sort of know when it’s done. Look for completely soft apples, like melted butter almost. If your slow cooker isn’t slow, keep an eye on it and watch for burning. If your apples are not very juicy, you can add a little apple cider (1/4 cup or so).

When the apples are cooked, use an immersion blender (if you have one) to blend until velvety smooth. If your apple butter is not a dark, luscious brown, it needs a little more time. You can let it cook on low for another hour or so.

If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can use a regular blender. Be mindful of lava scalding hot apple butter flying from the blender, though. That shit is deadly.

Recipe Notes

  • Because the neighborhood apples were not as flavorful as I would have liked, about half of my most recent recipe was supplemented by Braeburn apples, which are a good crunchy combination of tart and sweet. Straight up pie apples require more sugar to make a proper apple butter than I would like to use, so go for a mix of sweet and tart. For god’s sakes, don’t use Red or Yellow Delicious.
  • An apple peeler makes life so much easier. I use this one.
  • This recipe can be preserved with canning. The USDA would prefer that you use a pressure canner, but I have canned this by ladling hot apple butter into clean, sterilized pint jars and boiling in a water bath for 15 minutes.  If I don’t hear the pop of the lid, I eat it within two weeks, give it away, or freeze it. Some people add citric acid to deter bacteria, but I like to live on the edge.

Just Ten More Strokes – Truly Citrony Lemon Bars

 

lemon tart gluten-free
“See, Red? When life hands you lemons, you know what you gotta do?” “Wow,” Lauren said. “Yes, Mr. Cliché, I know what I have to do. I make lemonade.” “No,” he said. “You scream, ‘Fuck you, lemons!” “And then you throw those goddamn lemons into oncoming traffic, and you go do what you want to do.” ― Priscilla Glenn, Back to You

I cook when I am sad.

I cook when I am happy.

I cook to comfort people.

I have, at times, and much to my chagrin and embarrassment at my passive aggression, not cooked when someone made me angry.

I cook when I have no thoughts in my head.

I cook when there are so many thoughts in my head that my ears are ringing to the beat of my heart and my jaw is tense and I wake myself up in the night, grinding my teeth flat.

I cook when I don’t want to write and also when I do and also when I have things to write that I cannot put down on paper just in case I die and someone goes through my papers and it’s not something that anyone should be reading.

The only time I don’t cook is when I am can’t figure out who to cook for and making anything would waste food.

Except for the only other time that I don’t cook, which is when despair sets in.

Despair is a big word, like “disappointment.” I try to use my words carefully; I am critical in my head (and sometimes out of my mouth) when people toss words around in cavalier fashion. They matter, words do, even in this age of grunting and listicles and pictures.

So. Despair.

The dictionary defines it as “the complete loss or absence of hope.”

On all but my worst days, it’s possible for me to avoid this word. There is always something to reach for. Or even just to pin my mind to, just for a little while until the feeling passes.

My dad told me the story once of a guy who swam the English Channel. He (my dad) said the guy was interviewed, and one of the questions was, “How did you make it across?” Which is a really DUMB QUESTION, but many of my father’s stories and jokes featured dumb shit prominently.

The swimmer replied, “I just told myself to swim ten more strokes. And after I swam ten strokes, I thought, well, I can just swim ten more. So I swam across the Channel, ten strokes at a time.”

Frankly, this story is so neat and tidy and fits his long-forgotten point so well that I am pretty sure my dad made it up. Which was also part of his M.O.

But it works for many different aspects of my life.

On this day, I am trying to keep the English Channel in mind. There have been three deaths in and around my life in the past four weeks: two friends of my daughter’s and yesterday, my uncle. I don’t feel much like baking today, and despite the unutterably gorgeous weather of the past two days, I don’t feel much like going outside. But today I will force myself out of the bed. I will wash some laundry, and then some dogs, and maybe I will write for money and drag myself out for a little walk.

And I will definitely dig out my mother’s recipe for Truly Citrony Lemon Bars, which I will turn into a tart and bring to a friend who maybe might appreciate them. This uses plain, simple ingredients that you have lying around, which makes it easy because there is very little actual effort involved.

It’s the whole when life hands you lemons thing. Ten more strokes.

Truly Citrony Lemon Tart

Ingredients

1 stick butter, softened

1/4 cup powdered sugar (plus more for dusting)

1 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour (regular works here, too)

1 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup lemon juice (I used three lemons, but they were very juicy)

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 heaping tablespoons gluten-free all-purpose flour (regular works here, too)

Method

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream butter and sugar together, then add flour. Continue to beat until mixture clumps like dough.

Press dough on the bottom and slightly up the sides of a round tart pan (or 9×9″ glass baking dish).

Bake for 15 minutes.

While the crust is baking, mix together all remaining ingredients.

Pour filling over hot crust and bake again for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar to serve.

Just FYI, The Road Is Lined With Peach Cake With Pecan Crumble

I have made Peach Cake With Pecan Crumble this morning for breakfast and am now listening to the rain and waiting for it to cool. It is the kind of rain that is the harbinger of a change in the weather, and I am ready for fall.

August always seems to be this way: a headlong rush and flurry of busy-ness that only begins to calm down as the mercury drops and the sun dips below the horizon a few minutes earlier every night. I don’t subscribe to the status-seeking cult of busy-ness (also known as the “busy trap”) that surrounds people in the U.S., and yet I have a distinctly difficult time actually relaxing. It is hard for me to sit and just be.

Even as I put a period at the end of that last sentence I was rising to get a slice of still-warm cake because I just couldn’t wait anymore.

I have also, in the time that it has taken to write this little bit, texted with a friend and checked my calendar to see if there is anything pressing this week.

What happened to me?

Growing up, bored and lonely on the side of a mountain in western Maryland, I used to while the days away reading, making art, walking in the woods, and writing. My brother and I were not especially close, and when we were it was often because I was receiving a punch for some unknown transgression (or perhaps because he was, himself, bored and lonely and without any particular outlet, and I happened to be handy). I learned early not to approach him unless I was so bored that it was worth the gamble of a blow or a game.

We didn’t have a TV until I was older, and even then it was a black-and-white set with rabbit ears wrapped in tinfoil perched on top, so reception (and even just plain old power) was sketchy at best. We had animals and chores and two parents who worked, so I was left to my own devices more often than not. There was nothing much to do and an endless amount of time to get it done.

After many years of busy doing, I find myself now in a position where I can take my time to do what it is that I am doing. I have mercenary writing that people pay me to do, and then I have my own (which pays nothing but is one of those things like breathing that is necessary and reflexive and vital, even when words don’t make it onto the page. But I digress.). I have yoga teaching and a new job as the assistant manager at my lovely studio, both of which do not take much time either.

So I find myself at loose ends, again, as the calendar and the weather indicate that it is, indeed, decorative gourd season, motherfuckers.

What to do? How to fill the days?

Technically, I have completed all of the duties of a productive member of society: I have (nearly) raised a child to adulthood (a good one, I think); I have started a school and taught over a thousand children; I have been married to a man I loved and lost; I have been lucky enough to love another man in a way that is breath-taking to me – we are building a life together that I could not imagine in the years following the death of my husband.

I have volunteered my time, donated my money, rescued animals, helped others. I have paid taxes.

But what is it about my need to feel like I am doing something? Who cares what I am doing? Who cares how fast it gets done?

Lots of folks, turns out. I have been the recipient of some judgy looks and comments, for sure, about my lack of “busy” on a daily basis. On many days my presence is not required anywhere. I can sit with two dogs at my feet and a cat lazily twining in and around my ankles until I am damn good and ready to do whatever it is that I feel like doing (or whatever it is I have put on my calendar; I am an inveterate procrastinator, but I have not missed a single deadline, and my written calendar is the reason why). This seems to be offensive to some. If I am not worn out by work I don’t enjoy and shopping with the madding crowd every Saturday morning, my life is something of a millennial’s, and perhaps I should grow up.

We are conditioned from birth to do, go, and be. We are to be productive members of society. We are to graduate from schooling (and childhood) and earn money to buy All Of The Things, and we are to have a career or something that we do for 40 hours a week. We are selfish if we choose to art or write or travel or bake or otherwise defy the American Dream (which has itself become a nightmare).

In my graduating class at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, there were two philosophy majors who matriculated with the whole class of several thousand. I still remember wondering what, exactly, that degree would translate into as far as employment goes. Even when I got my English degree, the first question was always if I was planning on teaching. What would I DO with my degree?

Side note before I continue my white-privileged exploration: I am well aware that the color of my skin has allowed me to even think about not doing, going, and being. It is a source of much trouble in my mind and in my writing that I get to write from a place that many people (women) of color will not be able to experience. It is also true that I am exploring ways to support people of color in my work and in theirs. 

Side note, part two: I would not be able to indulge in this type of under-employment were it not for a few life-changing events, specifically the death of my husband in 2013, which put the process of living into perspective, and the closure of my school, HoneyFern, shortly thereafter. 

But here I am now, scoffing at my own self a bit, just as if I was one of the philosophy majors who has no real prospects for gainful employment.

I am trying to make peace with the fact that I there is no earthly requirement (or heavenly one for that matter) that I be constantly and consistently on a path of someone else’s design.

Trouble is getting myself to relax into a path of my own design. Or to even find a path. Or know how to start thinking about design.

We are most of us morons when it comes to listening to our own selves and shutting out all of the noise. It is challenging to find out if what we are doing is actually something we want to be doing or if we have been so corrupted by the influence of the world around us that we are just utterly convinced it was our own idea in the first place.

I am trying to shut up and listen to that little voice, not the Anti-Cheerleader, that raging bitch who insists I am unworthy and ask how dare I, but the voice that is still capable of awe and pure joy. The one that is unconnected to anything but itself. When I can shut up everything – The Facebook, Instagram, the people who would still treat me as if I were a child, the expectations of the world, my own doubt and anxiety and worry – I find moments and glimpses of the road ahead of me. And it’s a peaceful, gravel-lined walk that is meandering and has lots of benches with cushions lining it (I like a soft place to land).

For now, though, seems like I am still in the place of learning to unclench. The anxiety and worry that has gripped me this summer still squeezes me like a fist. It’s rainy days, with peach cake, that maybe help that ease up just a bit.

Peach Cake With Pecan Crumble

This is a breakfast cake, like coffee cake, only with fresh fruit, so technically a serving of fruit. 

Ingredients

Dry:

2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar

1/4 cup almond meal

Wet:

2 large eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
3/4 cup whole milk
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

2 cups fresh peach, peeled, pitted, and chopped small

Crumb topping:

1 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
6 tablespoons melted butter

Optional: 1/2 cup pecans (or type of nuts like almonds or macadamia), chopped small

Method

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease a square glass baking dish (butter, oil, or cooking spray). You can also use mini bundt pans (see Recipe Notes).

In a large-ish bowl whisk together dry ingredients.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together wet ingredients (I used a 2-cup measuring cup, adding the eggs last and beating them in).

In an even smaller bowl, whisk together crumb topping ingredients while you melt the butter.

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Add peaches and stir to combine.

Pour into glass baking dish.

Use a fork to add crumble ingredients to melted butter and mix to combine. It should be somewhat clumpy, which is what you want. Add pecans, if using. Spoon/pour/use your hands to distribute crumble on top of your cake.

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until the top is golden brown and a toothpick comes out fairly clean or with maybe a crumb or two clinging to it.

Best cooled completely and then maybe warmed slightly. If using gluten-free flour especially, cool completely for the best texture.

Recipe Notes

If using mini bundt pans, press crumb topping gently into the top of the batter and reduce baking time to 20-25 minutes. This can also be baked in a large bundt pan, with the same guidelines and a longer baking time (watch carefully). Cool for ten minutes in bundt pan, and then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.